


the quality of mercy

by intrikate88



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen, tw: references to nonconsensual activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrikate88/pseuds/intrikate88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sharp blade, the transparent lie: these are the things people like them call mercy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the quality of mercy

  


When Loki tells her that he is going to make to Barton kill her as tortuously as possible, it isn't a surprise: she expected him to threaten as much before she walked in. Still, Natasha backs up, turns around, calls him a monster. He is. He isn't a god; he's just like every other man in the Red Room who thought that having the technology to play with someone's mind gave them the right to show off their control. It isn't about fighting, with his type. It doesn't matter if it's Loki making Barton dance for him, or an old Soviet handler locking himself in a room with a crying little girl too terrified to voice her sobs; they're all the same.

Monsters. Touching where they shouldn't dare.

She will take pleasure in destroying Loki, when the time comes. She grew up with monsters and her shape was formed from their outlines. She knows as well as Loki that her well of red ink is bottomless.

But for now, there is Barton to be concerned with, and perhaps the conquering of earth if its defenders are all smashed by the green thing Bruce becomes, but mostly Barton. Loki tells her what Fury wants to know; now Natasha can strategize based on what she wanted to know. 

Now she knows. She walked in, the picture of a beaten woman, the kind of woman Loki's type would want to humiliate with her pain and weakness. (No one humiliates her like that. Not anymore.) And he gave her the instruction book on how to inflict pain, as if she had not already written it herself.

She doesn't mourn the nameless men whose throats she cut to make the USSR a thing of the past, just one more fallen empire. Natasha mourns Barton's clear dark eyes that see better from a distance, and now have no light in bright blue eyes that aren't his. He is not there.

Her partner, the man she trusts more than she trusts SHIELD or anyone else in the world, will try to kill her as soon as he next sees her. This knowledge doesn't hurt, not like it should; there is no sting of betrayal. Clint Barton will not attempt to kill her, only Loki, with Clint's hands, with their unique bowstring callouses. 

What she is afraid of, if she is afraid of anything, is that she will kill him. Efficiently, quickly, she will end his life.

(It's not exactly plan A.)

There is an understanding between them, one that has been on her mind since Coulson first said that Barton was compromised. If he is so broken that he can't be saved, she will kill him. Nobody else. He will not be executed like some rogue pack member that wandered off; she will give him the respect of dying at the hand of an equal. Not some anonymous sniper, not a junior agent with his first semiautomatic, but her arms holding him close, and him trusting her to keep her knife so sharp that he will barely feel the blade.

He would do the same for her. Once, he had made a different call when told to kill her. That decision shouldn't apply to every situation.

And so she is taking her time to breathe before she tells Fury and the rest of Loki's plans, because after, there won't be time. She finds a secluded hallway, and sits on the floor, sharpening one of her knives after another. They don't need it, but she has to make sure. She has to make sure they are too sharp to feel. 

This is the sort of mercy people like them know. 

And love is for children. Love is for those who have not been bent and broken into new shapes, who are too innocent to know what men like Loki are. (She doesn't remember ever being that innocent; she doesn't remember if that's because of the meddling of years or of her handlers.) Love is something good that can be given without reserve, not the trust that the knife will be sharp or the arrow will be quick.

Later, when she nearly concusses him, blue shadows still flicker in his eyes in the few minutes he wakes up, muttering and thrashing. She rubs her thumb over the handles of each of her knives, ready if the restraints should break. She waits, patiently: it is a skill Clint helped her develop, to let the world pass by unnoticed until the moment to strike comes. Time means nothing, even as the rest of the helicarrier is in chaos. Natasha knows her partner's movements as well as her own; if he wakes for good with those damn bright blue eyes, then she will not hesitate.

Then at last he wakes up as himself, or as much of himself as he can be. Tasha won't tell how many people Loki used Clint's hands to kill.

This is the sort of mercy that she wished she had received; she can least give it to him.

Clint suits up when Captain America tells him to, and when he emerges, dressed to fight, he puts a hand over Natasha's, still resting on her thigh sheath of knives. He bumps her shoulder with his. "I knew I could rely on you."

"I know," she says, and takes his hand (the one that had so recently hit her, pulled her hair). "And I knew you wouldn't have to."

Since they both know it's a lie, it's almost like telling the truth. But they can spare each other the words. Silence is the mercy that they have only for each other.


End file.
